Developing and maintaining a loyal customer base is a critical component of operating a successful casino enterprise. To develop a loyal customer base, casino enterprises typically offer customers the chance to participate in a loyalty program that allows game play and possibly other customer activities to be tracked. In a traditional player loyalty program, a casino enterprise requires a player or customer to provide identification information before creating an account for the player or customer. The player identification information is stored to the player account, and can then be used to track the player through various gaming and non-gaming activities. Promotions and advertisements can then be sent to the player, such as via regular mail, electronic mail and/or any other identifying means provided by the player. A physical instrument, such as a magnetic striped card, is also typically provided to the player.
The card or other instrument can include an account number associated with the loyalty program account created for the player, and can be utilized during various activities within the casino enterprise so that a record of the player activities are generated and stored to an account associated with the instrument. As an example, a customer can insert a magnetic-striped player tracking card into a card reader associated with a slot machine, gaming table or other gaming device or venue to have a record of the player gaming activity on the slot machine stored to the account associated with the player tracking card. Based on the player activities, such as an amount wagered or amount spent elsewhere at the casino, the casino enterprise can offer the player or customer “comps” (i.e., complimentary offers), such as free or discounted services. In addition, the casino enterprise can mine and analyze the information gathered from the loyalty program, so as to better understand the demographics and behavioral patterns of their customers. This analysis can then be used to better tune their operating models, such as their mixture of services and comps that are provided, with the objective of increasing their profitability.
Unfortunately, many players do not wish to be part of a loyalty program for a casino. Such players may not want to go to the trouble of signing up for a loyalty program, or may simply desire not to provide certain aspects of their personal information to a given casino enterprise. One downside of this is that many opportunities to reward, incentivize, advertise and encourage further repeat business from anonymous and sometimes loyal players is often lost to the casino enterprise. While many designs and techniques used to provide player loyalty and tracking programs have generally worked well in the past, there is always a desire to provide further systems and methods to allow for anonymous player tracking even where players do not sign up for a formal player loyalty program.